Sunday, March 14, 2021

Arsenal 2 - 1 Tottenham

 I couldn't help myself, and watched this game.  It's so nerve-wracking.  The Gunners were superb in the first half, and could easily have been up 3-1, but the woodwork intervened a couple times and some last-ditch defending held us to just the one deflected Odegaard shot.  Lamela's rabona was awesome, and came at the end of Tottenham's best move of the day, so fair play to them.  But they were toothless the rest of the half.

I thought we were pretty damned good in the second half, too, until Lamela was ejected.  Then for some crazy reason, we started giving the ball away, presented Spuds with corners and free kicks, and otherwise came off second best to a team that had ten men.  Kane had one in the back of the net off a free kick but was well offside, then he hit the post having beaten Leno all ends up on another free kick, the rebound being cleared by an alert Gabriel.  Thankfully, on the last free kick, Kane struck it over the bar.  This was a vital three points.



If you'd have told me that with ten games to go we'd be two points back of Liverpool, I'd have figured we 
would be in the top four for sure, not tenth.  However, we could overtake Villa, Liverpool, Spuds, and Everton to finish in sixth, a reasonable goal.  West Ham might collapse too.  Chelsea in fourth is ten points better than us (we do have a game in hand) and in all likelihood too far away to worry about us.  Obviously, we'll have to win at least seven, probably eight of our remaining ten games to accomplish that.  It's a big ask.